Chinese legal activist’s wife calls on international community for help

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

By Tania Branigan, reporter for The Guardian
December 1, 2010

The wife of a blind Chinese legal activist who is living with him under house arrest, has called on the international community for help, a human rights group has said.
The self-taught "barefoot lawyer" Chen Guangcheng fell foul of the authorities after exposing human rights abuses including forced abortions under the government's strict birth control policies.

Chen, who was blinded in childhood, was released from prison in September after serving more than four years for "intentionally damaging property" and "gathering crowds to disturb transport order", but campaigners say he and his family remain under tight controls. Relatives, friends and foreign diplomats have all been stopped from visiting by the dozens of men guarding their home in Shandong province in northern China.

According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), Chen's wife Yuan Weijing said their five-year-old daughter is not allowed to go to nursery and the only family member allowed out to shop for food is his mother, who is in her 70s.

Yuan said her husband was in very poor health but that repeated requests for access to medical treatment had been rejected. She also reported that police had repeatedly stormed their home without warning and alleged that Chen's life had been threatened.
CSW said that Yuan managed to send the message out on 24 November. The family has had only sporadic access to communications and the group did not specify how it obtained the information beyond saying it came third-hand but via a reliable source.

The message cannot be independently verified, but tallies with other accounts of the family's conditions. They are reportedly guarded round the clock by 12 policemen, with as many as 100 more men - some thought to be police officers - guarding the entrances to the village.

Earlier this month Human Rights In China said relatives were subjected to body searches before and after visiting Chen and Yuan, citing an activist who tried to see them. But since early October all visits have been halted, the group added.

Shandong provincial government officials said they would look into the case but did not call back. Township officials said they knew nothing about it and village authorities did not answer calls.

Separately, a dissident who tried to found an opposition party was released today after serving 12 years in prison for endangering state security.

Qin Yongmin, 57, is a long-standing activist who previously spent 10 years in a jail and a labour camp. He told the Associated Press that officers ordered him not to talk to journalists or meet other dissidents and confiscated his prison writings. "I tried to tell them it was illegal but they just stole everything I had written," Qin said.

Qin told the German press agency DPA that he had been "persecuted very severely" and was "almost blind" after his eyesight deteriorated in jail. He added: "For China's democracy and human rights activists, China is just a big prison. I was released from prison into another big prison." But he said he would resume publishing the newsletter that landed him in trouble and added: "The China Democracy Party belongs to the future".

Two other founders of the China Democracy Party, Wang Youcai and Xu Wenli, were handed lengthy jail sentences but were subsequently exiled to the US on medical parole.